Double Exposure
Collaboration
Double Exposure, an ongoing project with my friend Sarah Johnson, imagines multiple realities within a single photographic frame.
When I visited Sarah in 2019 at her home near Geneva, Switzerland, I brought photos we had taken of each other in 2001 in Geneva and Annecy, France, with the idea of recreating them. We took new photos at the original sites on Rue de Mont Blanc, at the Cathedral and near Lake Annecy, with the intention of combining both sets of photos into double diptychs. We thought of also taking new double exposure photographs on Sarah’s digital camera with a double exposure function and the old-fashioned way on my older plastic 620 film camera.
Taking pictures became more like play as we started experimenting with these new possibilities. We discussed how to create images layered with the older and newer versions of ourselves as a way of seeing the passing of time within one image. Even after my visit, we kept working together to discover the possibilities of meaning inherent in the concept of double exposure. We met periodically over zoom. When both of us were locked down in our homes because of the pandemic, we began more regular once-a-week check-ins. We both learned new digital layering skills, and our collaboration has been an experiment in how to combine our other individual skills and ideas into a series that serves both of our visions and interests. We completed a photobook, Double Exposure, as a first fruit of this project, a hand-made limited series first volume of 44 double exposure images, each image created on a single medium format negative, often with both of us contributing individually to the two exposures. We plan to produce a commercially printed version of the same content, and then move on to a second volume of multiple-image work of digitally-created by superimpositions of photographs in which we each contribute at least one image.